


Holly and Pinecones

by i_am_not_a_bird



Series: The Longest Night fics [1]
Category: Warriors - Erin Hunter
Genre: Fluff, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, the longest night, warrior cats totally celebrate Christmas because Kate Cary said it was so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 15:34:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21710473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/i_am_not_a_bird/pseuds/i_am_not_a_bird
Summary: A Christmas fic. It's Hollyleaf first leaf-bare away from the Clans, and while Fallen Leaves doesn't always understand her Clan traditions, he's going to make sure they celebrate the Longest Night exactly the way she used to back at home.
Relationships: Fallen Leaves & Hollyleaf (Warriors)
Series: The Longest Night fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2073069
Comments: 11
Kudos: 28





	Holly and Pinecones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TortieMom](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TortieMom/gifts), [WOW Stream](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=WOW+Stream).
  * Inspired by [The Longest Night](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/540892) by Kate Cary. 



> Beta'd by [jamjam24](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jamjam24/pseuds/jamjam24).
> 
> The concept is taken, of course, from Kate Cary's lovely holiday fic about the Clans celebrating the Longest Night, which I first heard on the Words on Warriors Christmas special stream. (Hence the gift <3) This could be read as a Fallen Leaves/Hollyleaf fic if you like that, but there's nothing explicitly romantic in here. Personally, I'm a fan of ace/aro Holly.
> 
> Now grab your popcorn, settle down, and put on your Credibility Stretching Glasses, because I'm fudging the canon of Hollyleaf's Story. For the sake of Christmas >:)

The underground river was covered in a thin layer of ice. Fallen Leaves could feel the leaf-bare chill start to set into the tunnels, and he knew Hollyleaf, who needed warmth to survive, felt it worse than he did. The icicles lining the edges of exits and entrances, which in previous seasons had been just another pretty thing to look at, now made Fallen Leaves’ stomach clench with worry. Hollyleaf was getting enough food-- she ventured out of the tunnels when she needed to-- but Fallen Leaves had no way to make sure she was warm. Even when he spent the night with her, he couldn’t help her; his pelt was as cold to the touch as the rest of the tunnels.

Hollyleaf slogged by, but as the days grew colder and the food grew scarcer, Fallen Leaves could tell that something was really bothering her. He hoped it was nothing more than the nip in the air and the cold in her bones; those things could be fixed soon enough, when the solstice came and the days would start to get longer and warmer. But there was something about the particular set to her shoulders. She wasn’t just tired or cold or scared-- she was sad. The downcast look she had when she was talking about her old family was showing up more and more often on her, without being prompted.

One evening, Fallen Leaves was waiting for Hollyleaf to return in the shadow of the woodland tunnel entrance. Every time she went out-- and it was becoming more and more frequently, with the underground river off limits-- Fallen Leaves always felt a familiar twinge of worry. He tended to work himself up into a panic when she was gone long enough. It was just so easy to imagine ways Hollyleaf could get herself into trouble, ways a fox or a badger or a rival Clan patrol could catch her and finish her off. And then she’d be gone, the one good thing Fallen Leaves had had for too many seasons to count. The forest was full of dangers, and he could almost picture her, perhaps tangled up in a thornbush, unable to move, bleeding in several places and waiting for death to find her--

Warm fur brushed past him as Hollyleaf stalked into the tunnels. Fallen Leaves shook his frightening daydreams out of his head and turned to follow her back inside. It was unusual for her to not say hello. Fallen Leaves followed from a good distance, trying to judge her mood without feeling like he was intruding. She seemed particularly tense, and she was walking at a fast clip. Finally, after winding her way through many tunnels, Hollyleaf slowed to a halt when they reached the rockslide she had first fallen into the tunnels through. She was silent for a moment.

“How was it?” Fallen Leaves asked gently. He didn’t mention how she hadn’t brought back any prey.

“It was fine,” she said.

In the darkness, he couldn’t make out her expression. Fallen Leaves slid up, pressing his flank against hers and winding their tails together, if only for the reassurance that she was warm and alive.

“It was not fine,” she admitted softly, turning her head to look away from him.

“What was it? What happened?” Fallen Leaves’ mind already began racing. Any number of things could’ve made her upset… but it didn’t look like she was physically hurt at all, which was good. Probably something to do with her Clan.

“I saw my mother,” Hollyleaf said, her voice barely a breath. “Not my real one. The one that raised me. Squirrelflight. I went too close to the border, far closer than I like to be, and I saw her gathering pinecones.”

Fallen Leaves kept silent, unsure what the significance of the pinecones was. Hollyleaf let out an audible sigh, pushing past him and scrabbling onto one of the smaller rocks.

“The nights are getting longer,” she murmured. “They must be preparing to celebrate the Longest Night soon, if they’re already gathering decorations. And they’re doing it without me,” she finished wretchedly. “My family…”

“I’m sorry,” Fallen Leaves said. “I know it’s not enough, but I am. Can you…” He paused, thinking. “If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s alright. But could you tell me how you celebrated the Longest Night? I never used to anything special this time of year, back when I was still with my mother.”

He couldn’t see for sure in the darkness, but Fallen Leaves was pretty sure he could hear a small smile on Hollyleaf’s voice. “Well.. the whole point was that even though things are tough in the leaf-bare, we’re still alive. We’re still together. And things are going to get better, because from there on out, the days would be getting longer and the nights shorter. And that’s something worth celebrating.” She swallowed thickly. “We would decorate our dens with whatever we could find. Because of the season, it was usually holly berries, pinecones, acorns… anything pretty. And we would give each other gifts. Leafpool used to give us leaves of catnip, when were still young enough to go crazy about the smell of them.”

Mentions of Leafpool were usually accompanied by Hollyleaf’s gaze clouding over in anger. But this time, her voice was hollow and sad. To be honest, it broke Fallen Leaves’ heart, just a little.

“Do you know when it is?” he asked. “I mean, I know it’s hard to tell how much time has passed here sometimes…” He couldn’t count how many seasons he had been waiting for Broken Shadow.

“A quarter-moon from tomorrow,” she said immediately. She shifted slightly, and her eyes caught a glint of green light. “That’s the actual longest night itself. The morning after is when we give our gifts. The apprentices will be hunting extra hard for the elders, and the queens will be making moss-balls and toys for the kits. Leafpool and Jayfeather will be seeing if they can spare any catmint… that is, if Leafpool is still a medicine cat.” She gave the ground a dark look.

_ Hollyleaf still remembers, _ Fallen Leaves thought to himself with a pang of sadness.  _ She knows everything about her old family. She knows how long she’s been here. _

_ And the longer she has to go without it, the sadder she gets. _

“The sun’s setting,” he said softly. “Would you like me to stay with you tonight, or should I go?”

“You can go if you’d like.” In the dark, the shadows shifted, and Fallen Leaves could tell that Hollyleaf was curling up into a ball. “I’ll be fine here tonight. It’s not too cold.”

But that was a lie. It was far too cold, because Hollyleaf was away from comfy moss beds and the warmth of her Clanmates. Fallen Leaves wished, not for the first time, that he had a better place for her to stay, not as dark and dank as the tunnels. Or at the very least, he wished he had a warm pelt of his own to offer her. But he hadn’t been warm since the tunnels flooded over all those seasons ago, and Hollyleaf wasn’t ready to go back to her old home. He couldn’t fix this.

There was one thing he could do for her. 

It was an idea. It might make her sadder. But it might make her feel more at home. If he couldn’t warm her pelt, at least he might be able to warm her heart.

Fallen Leaves turned away from the rockslide and padded through the tunnels.

Hollyleaf woke up, as she usually did, feeling cold and stiff. She stretched her legs out, hoping a walk would warm her up. Fallen Leaves did always like to take her out on dawn patrols, even though their only enemies were pretend. That sounded nice to her right now. Not as nice as a warm, cozy nest beside her family, but she never did get to be beside Jayfeather after he became a medicine cat apprentice anyway. And Squirrelflight and Lionblaze wouldn’t want to cuddle with her after what she’d done.

Great StarClan, she could still remember so clearly how it felt seeing Squirrelflight in the woods, gathering pinecones like nothing was wrong. She loved her new home in the tunnels with Fallen Leaves, but there was always that incessant tug in her heart back to ThunderClan and to her family. She couldn’t help but miss them and all the smells of the old camp. Fallen Leaves had been down here so long, she couldn’t tell his scent apart from the tunnel’s, and the only prey-scents were of the minnows. She missed the smells of her food, of her family, and of the Longest Night.

Hollyleaf padded sleepily through the tunnels, muscle memory guiding her more than her whiskers as she picked a path towards the cave with the underground river. Fallen Leaves was already there when she got there, but something was a little bit off. Her nose twitched.

“Have you been out?” she asked him. She squinted to make him out in the dark, and… was that a trail of ivy dangling from his mouth?

“I have,” Fallen Leaves proudly mumbled around it. “I have some stuff for you.”

So that was what was different about the smell. She opened her mouth to let the scent waft in, and it was unmistakable: pinecones, acorns, holly berries and leaves, and a heaping mound of moss. Her jaws fell open.  _ He gathered this stuff for me. _

“Fallen Leaves…” She struggled to find words. “You must have spent half the night looking for these! You didn’t have to do this.” She looked at all of them, their shapes blurred by the darkness but still unmistakably decorations. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”

His eyes seemed to light up as she spoke. “You really do like them? I thought we could decorate this quarter-moon. The exits and entrances, maybe, or the bigger caves, or wherever it is you want to sleep on the Longest Night-- that is, if you’d still like to celebrate. You don’t have to. I know it’s different without your mothers. I-- I miss my mother, too.” His voice died off.

She touched her muzzle to his shoulder. He still felt cold like he always did, but he seemed to relax a little at the touch. She drew back, smiling brightly at him.

“I think, because it’s a special occasion, we should be allowed to call off patrols,” she said.

Some of his energy came back. “Oh, really?” he said teasingly. “That’s an awful bold call to make. What if we’re attacked by vicious, hungry foxes because of your negligence?”

“If we’re attacked by hungry foxes,” she declared, “I don’t mind that my last memory will be of us decorating for the Longest Night. It’d be worth it, I think.”

“And of course, you’re talking about the very real foxes that are very much waiting for the day we don’t mark our borders to swoop in and kill us,” he said as if to clarify.

“Yes,” she said with a smile, scooping up a pinecone in her mouth. “Those are the ones.”

Over the past few days, they had built barriers of bracken and other ferns around the two non-Clan territory entrances (“To protect ourselves from the very real foxes!” Hollyleaf had declared, although Fallen Leaves had suspected it was more about feeling like she was back at ThunderClan camp) and had woven in the holly and pinecones as decorations. They made two moss nests in an alcove in the same cave as the river, and hers was lined at the edge with the stem of ivy he’d found. Acorns and holly berries were everywhere it looked or smelled pretty to put them. Despite his protests (he really did want some alone time, as much as he loved her), Hollyleaf dragged Fallen Leaves to sleep in the other nest beside hers as soon as it was ready.

“It’s too bad we didn’t have more ivy,” she said, glancing between them. “Yours would look so much prettier with it.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’ll stay here less often than you will, after all.”

“Where do you go most nights?” she asked. “When you’re not sleeping here with me?”   
“Out,” he said vaguely.  _ I don’t ever sleep _ , he wanted to say, but he wasn’t quite sure how to explain that to her. “Does it bother you when I’m gone?”   
She shook her head. “Whatever you want to do is fine with me.”

“But you have no one else here. Doesn’t it make you miss your Clan?”

She smiled, which surprised Fallen Leaves. “You don’t have to think about that. You’ve already done so much to make sure I don’t miss ThunderClan. I mean, StarClan, look at where we’re sleeping! It’s even starting to smell like the old camp.” She snuggled up deeper into her nest. “I just wish I could give something to my old Clanmates. In the spirit of the Longest Night. But I can’t go back. They… they all think I’m dead.”

_ She’s sad again. How can I fix this?  _ “We can give gifts to each other,” he suggested.

“Maybe,” she said with a gusty sigh.

A moment passed. “What would you give them?” Fallen Leaves murmured softly. “If you were still in ThunderClan.”

Hollyleaf was silent for so long, Fallen Leaves wasn’t sure she had heard him. When she spoke, it was very quiet. “The kits would get things to play with, of course. We always used to give Jayfeather a jay’s feather if we could find one. We said it was a joke, and he always complained, but he would wear it on his ear all leaf-bare. And for Lionblaze, we’d catch the biggest, juiciest squirrel we could find; that was his favorite food. We helped Leafpool gather the leaf-bare herbs, of course, or sort through her stock, so she could have the day off.” She closed her eyes. “When we were only a few moons old, we all caught butterflies for Squirrelflight and Brambleclaw, and we made them two moss balls, because it was the only thing we knew how to do. We were just kits. If I could give them a gift… I think they’d like something like that, if only to remind them that we still think of them as our parents.” Her eyes opened, a helpless look on her face. “Or at least, I do. I don’t know how Jayfeather and Lionblaze think of them anymore. Squirrelflight… she did lie to us. She’s the reason that I’m here and that they all think I’m dead.”

Fallen Leaves thought for a moment. “Well, you can’t bring them gifts. But if it makes you feel any better, you could prepare something for them. Just a few little things to show that they’re still in your heart, even if they’ll never see them.” There was a beat of silence. “Or not. It might just make you more sad. But it was just a thought.”

“No, I think that’s a good idea,” she said with a smile. “It would make me feel better. I mean… it’s the thought that counts, right?”   
“Right,” he murmured, smiling back at her. “Get some sleep, Hollyleaf.”

Hollyleaf carefully picked her way along the branch, taking each step cautiously and slowly, her eyes trained on the bird nest above her. If she fell, she could really hurt herself-- just like Cinderheart had when she was climbing the Sky Oak back when they were all apprentices. Not that she was thinking about Cinderheart, or about any of her old Clan. She was definitely only thinking about her new home now, with Fallen Leaves, and how they could celebrate the Longest Night.

Hollyleaf hated not being in control of her own feelings.

She crouched down, waggling her haunches, and jumped to the next branch over. There was the bird nest. It was abandoned, but she could still smell hints of the stale scent of blue jay. And sure enough, there was a stray feather here.  _ Perfect. _ She grabbed it in her teeth and turned, picking her way carefully down the branches to the forest floor, careful not to slip and fall. When she made it safely down, she breathed a sigh of relief.

Fallen Leaves was waiting for her at the entrance to the woodland tunnel. She murmured a happy greeting around the feather, and he followed her to the nearest cave. There was the things she’d gathered over the past day: moth wings, a few stems of thyme she had found for Leafpool, a mossball, and, the luckiest find, a very large squirrel. She set Jayfeather’s feather with the other.Her gift for Fallen Leaves-- a leaf of catmint she had snuck close to a Twolegplace to find, because he had had told her moons ago he had never seen any before-- was hidden somewhere else, hopefully where he couldn’t find it.

“Is all of it ready?” Fallen Leaves asked.

“Yep,” Hollyleaf said proudly. 

She wished she could deliver the presents herself… but her Clanmates thought she was dead. And even if they knew she wasn’t, they wouldn’t want anything to do with her after she murdered Ashfur. She couldn’t go back. But it was enough to be thinking of them. It was enough that Fallen Leaves cared so much he was willing to help her with this.

That night would be the Longest Night. While the kits in ThunderClan slept excited for the following morning, Hollyleaf would be with Fallen Leaves, missing her family but just as excited to celebrate with him. He wasn’t ThunderClan, but he was still her family in a way. The coldness of his pelt beside her, which had once seemed alarming. was reassuring and familiar.

Maybe, she thought as she climbed into her nest beside his, things would be okay.

Hollyleaf left in the middle of the night, while Fallen Leaves was pretending to be asleep. She returned more tired than before but oddly content, and the gifts for her Clanmates were gone. Not wanting to disturb her, Fallen Leaves pretending to sleep right through it. She was back asleep before morning.

Fallen Leaves nudged her awake when he thought enough time had passed. “The Longest Night is over,” he murmured. “Good morning, Hollyleaf.”

She looked up at him, blinking her eyes blearily. “Good morning, Fallen Leaves,” she said sleepily. “I need… I have a gift for you somewhere…”

Fallen Leaves purred and shook his head. “No, I want to give you your present first. Come follow me.”

He headed down one of the tunnels, keeping his tail straight out to guide Hollyleaf behind him. He could barely contain his excitement. Hollyleaf followed behind seeming dazed and sleepy, but he could hear her sniffing in the dark, like she was trying to pick up a scent.  _ You’ll know what it is soon enough. _

They broke out into the right tunnel, and there it was: a large, heaping fresh-kill pile.

Hollyleaf halted in her tracks. “Is this what I think it is?” She was sniffing furiously and squinting in the dark.

“Yes,” Fallen Leaves said, beaming. “All for you. I spent the past few days hunting outside whenever I had a free moment. You can eat all you want today and tomorrow, and you don’t have to catch any of it. You can feast if you’d like to.”

Hollyleaf smiled and twined her tail into Fallen Leaves’. “Thank you. Thank you for all of this.” She pulled away, glancing to the other tunnel. “Wait here. I’m going to grab your present.

She turned and hurried back down the tunnel they came from. She was back a few moments later, holding a delicious-smelling plant. Fallen Leaves’ whiskers twitched.

“What is it that?”

“Catmint,” she said proudly, setting it down in front of him. “You told me you’d never seen any before, so I went out searching for it.”

The smell was just as enticing as she promised. He rubbed his cheek experimentally against the side of it, even though he didn’t have a scent left to mark it with.

“It would’ve been better if you’d had it when you were a kit,” Hollyleaf said. “Kits go crazy over it. But it’s still pretty great, right?”   
“Thank you,” he murmured. “Not just for this. Thank you for being my friend.”  _ It’s been countless seasons since I had one of those _ , he thought _. _ “But I have a question for you. Hollyleaf…” He paused, searching for words. “Be honest with me. Did you leave the tunnels last night?”

Her smile fell away, and Fallen Leaves was frantic to fix it. “No, no, I’m not mad, I wouldn’t be mad, it’s no big deal, I was just curious, Hollyleaf, I just wanted to know--”

“I did,” she admitted. “I couldn’t take it anymore, not being able to give anything to my family. So I went out and I rolled in some garlic to disguise my scent, and then I brought the presents to the edge of ThunderClan camp. They didn’t see me, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t smell me, but…” She hung her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t want you to think I’m ungrateful or anything. I just… I miss them. I wanted to do something for them. But they could have caught me and messed up this whole thing that we have here, and that wouldn’t be okay. It was a stupid thing of me to do.”

“It’s fine.” He slid up beside her, pressing his side against hers. “Hollyleaf, it’s okay.”

“Really?” she asked softly.

“Really,” he promised

Maybe she missed her Clan. Maybe this silly little leaf-bare celebration he tried to do for her wasn’t enough. Maybe she wasn’t going to stay with Fallen Leaves forever.

That was fine. He would be here for her until she was ready to leave, and he would make sure she was as happy as she could possibly be in the meantime.

It was the least he could do for the cat who was the closest thing to family he’d had in seasons.


End file.
